Rourkela: The municipal corporation is undertaking an awareness drive among street vendors - especially the tyre shops, coconut sellers and the tea stalls - apart from rag pickers as precautionary measures against dengue.

"These places are the breeding ground of the aedes mosquito, the career of the dengue. As all of us know that it breeds only in stagnant water with hard surface. So, apart from the coolers installed in houses, the abandoned tyres, coconut shells, plastic tea cups and the rag dumps are their most favoured places. This happens because the mosquito larvae requires a hard surface to jump into the water, which is not possible with soil below," said the Rourkela Municipal Corporation's health officer Basant Kumar Mishra.

Mishra said: "In the door-to-door awareness programmes being initiated by the National Urban Health Mission, we are pressing the anganwadi workers into service for mass awareness. We are also concentrating on the vendors. We are instructing them to cover their goods with plastic sheets to prevent mosquito breeding."

The health officer said: "The mosquito, which takes around nine days to become able to bite, has a radius of 300 metres of active zone. So, the vendors are being told to take care of their own goods and spread awareness amongst others running their trade nearby."

Regarding fogging, he dispelled some wrong notions. The officer said: "This is not the time for fogging, because the smoke actually hits the trees where the mosquitoes sit, and at this time, they are not found there."

The Rourkela Government Hospital has opened its dengue ward for any eventuality. "We have opened our dengue ward and are prepared for any emergency at this moment. There is no shortage of kit for ascertaining the fever," said the hospital's officiating medical superintendent Dr Dinabandhu Panda.

A doctor at the medical facility said: "When the disease gets widespread, many private clinics start testing dengue. They generally do the NSI-slide test and show an alarming rate in increase of dengue. But, that is not true. The elisa test is the most accurate, and the slide test number dramatically drops when elisa test is done. So, the affected persons' families are requested to do the test either here or at Ispat General Hospital or Government Hospital Sundargarh, where it is available."